{"id":2074,"date":"2008-07-16T09:19:17","date_gmt":"2008-07-16T13:19:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=2074"},"modified":"2008-07-16T09:20:14","modified_gmt":"2008-07-16T13:20:14","slug":"a-little-historical-perspective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=2074","title":{"rendered":"A little Historical Perspective"},"content":{"rendered":"

[N]o [one] was seen begging the [occupiers] to spare his life, nor did they in ignoble fashion fall and cling to the knees of their conquerors. But neither did the agony of courage elicit pity from the foe nor did the day’s length suffer for the cruelty of their vengeance. All the city was pillaged. Everywhere boys and girls were dragged into captivity as they wailed piteously the names of their mothers. […] In the end, when night finally intervened, the houses had been plundered and children and women and aged persons who had fled into the temples were torn from sanctuary and subjected to outrage without limit.<\/p>\n

IVAW member, battle of Fallujah, 2006<\/strike><\/p>\n

Diodorus, recounting the attack of Phillip of Macedon on Thebes August 2, 338 BC.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This will be a multi-part, multi-purposed post. First off, it is part of my refutation of the Rooney belief that the state is the largest purveyor of crime and violence, and that such is getting worse. In might seem counterintuitive that I would start with an historical discussion of attacks on civilian populaces, but bear with me. This post also serves as my response to the absolutely absurd work by Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian (mis)entitled Collateral Damage, America\u2019s War Against Iraqi Civilians.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve noted in the past how I find it interesting the way IVAW members ridicule the service of others who disagree. For instance, Kokesh has ridiculed Jonn for his service, even though it was in Special Ops units. My service in a combat unit in Afghanistan has been categorized as less meaningful than that of a Sniper who served (oddly) in Poland. Vietnam vets faced that from WWII vets, and DSI vets got in from their Vietnam predecessors. The point of all this is that every group seems to think that their experiences are not only singular, but far superior to those preceding and following them.<\/p>\n

An early warning on this post. Most of it is taken from a paper I did in law school entitled \u201cReputational Costs: An Historical Analysis of State Supported Military Attacks on Foreign Civilian Populaces.\u201d Unfortunately, I don\u2019t seem to have the final copy, and this reads as if I wrote it at 4 in the morning listening to Wagner or something. I don\u2019t know why my first drafts come off so pompous, but there it is. Anyway, this post will only look historically at attacks on civilians, not something which just sprung up with the recent conflict in Iraq. If you want the footnotes because you challenge it, I will provide each if anyone needs it.<\/p>\n

In the famous Melian Diologues of Thucydides\u2019 History of the Peloponnesian war, the Athenians famously state that the \u201cstrong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.\u201d The Melians, in turn, seek to dissuade the Athenians from this hostile course of action with pleas to remaining neutral, neither enemy nor ally, but instead as mere friends. The Athenian response is: \u201cyour hostility cannot so much hurt us as your friendship will be an argument to our subjects of our weakness, and your enmity of our power.\u201d And while the dialogues themselves take up 28 paragraphs in History, the entirety of the siege is recounted in two, and the tragic denouement in a half of a single sentence:<\/p>\n

and some treachery taking place inside, the Melians surrendered at discretion to the Athenians, who put to death all the grown men whom they took, and sold the women and children for slaves, and subsequently sent out five hundred colonists and inhabited the place themselves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In 378, Thrace was once again revisited with utter destruction, this time at the hands of Fridigern, leader of the Ostrogoths.<\/p>\n

Without distinction of age or sex all places were ablaze with great fires, sucklings were torn from the very breasts of their mothers and slain, matrons and widows whose husbands had been killed before their eyes were carried off, boys of tender or adult age were dragged away over the dead bodies of their parents.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Theological differences could often lead to atrocities, no place more clearly depicted than during the Albigensian Crusade in 1209, when a group of crusaders attacked the town of Beziers, located in present day France. The Catholic warriors came to eradicate the Cathars who lived there. In the ensuing carnage, the leader of the group, Papal legate Arnaud-Amaury was asked by a Crusader how the Cathars might be distinguished from other citizens. To which he responded \u201cCaedite eos! Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius” \u2014 “Kill them [all]! Surely the Lord discerns which [ones] are his.”<\/p>\n

Discovery of the New World opened a new front for both congregants and coin, and again more attacks against civilian populaces. Spanish conquistadors under Pedro de Alvarado in 1523 were savage in their attempts to increase both, including forays into Guatemala chronicled by Catholic Priest Bartolome de Las Casas:<\/p>\n

He [Alvarado] advanced killing, ravaging, burning, robbing and destroying all the country wherever he came, under the pretext, namely, that the Indians should subject themselves to such inhumane, unjust and cruel men, in the name of the unknown King of Spain, of whom they had never heard and whom they considered to be more unjust and cruel than his representatives.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

However, it should not be overstated that all attacks against civilian populaces were dictated by economic desires, be they financial in nature or in terms of reputational gains. Some simply reveled in the destruction. To Mongol leader Ghengiz Khan is attributed a quotation which has widely been cited in popular culture 800 years after its\u2019 utterance:<\/p>\n

[t]he greatest happiness is to vanquish your enemies, to chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth, to see those dear to them bathed in tears, to clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Others sought destruction as retribution for past atrocities, like the sack of Antwerp by the Spanish Army in 1576. A contemporary account of that action commends the bravery of the Spanish, but notes that:<\/p>\n

as their valiance was to be much commended; so yet I can much discommend their barbarous cruelty in many respects\u2026they neither spared Age nor Sex, Time nor Place, Person nor Country, Profession nor Religion, Young nor Old, Rich nor Poor, Strong nor Feeble: but, without any mercy, did tyrannously triumph, when there was neither man nor means to resist them. I refrain to rehearse the heaps of dead carcasses which lay at every trench where they entered; the thickness whereof did in many places exceed the height of a man.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Likewise in the British retreat to Corunna during the Napoleonic Wars, where a unit of British Dragoons exacted a horrific revenge for an earlier engagement.<\/p>\n

Frantic women held forth their babies, suing for mercy by the cries of defenseless innocence; but all to no purpose. The dragoons of the polite and civilized nation advanced, and cut right and left, regardless of intoxication, age or sex. Drunkards, women and children were indiscriminately hewn down \u2013 a dastardly revenge for the defeat at Benevente.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to Dr. Gregory H. Stanton, president of Genocide Watch,<\/p>\n

[t]he Nazi Holocaust was among the most evil genocides in history. But the Allies\u2019 firebombing of Dresden and nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were also war crimes \u2013 and\u2026also acts of genocide. We are all capable of evil and must be restrained by law from committing it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

With regard to Dresden, Historian Max Hastings provides the contrary view:<\/p>\n

I believe it is wrong to describe strategic bombing as a war crime, for this might be held to suggest some moral equivalence with the deeds of the Nazis. Bombing represented a sincere, albeit mistaken attempt to bring about Germany’s military defeat.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The dropping of the atomic bombs on Japanese cities created a much larger controversy. On a previously unknown scale, the bombs were capable of massive casulaties, indiscriminate to military or civilian personnel. Several considerations went into the decision to drop the bombs, harbingers of the theories of such weapons which have persisted to this day.\u00a0 Namely, \u201cthe commitment to ending the war with Japan as quickly as possible, the assumption that the bomb would be used when it became available, the willingness to attack civilian targets as a legitimate means of waging war, and the hope that the bomb would help advance American diplomatic objectives.\u201d According to President Harry Truman, the decision to drop the bomb was “never any decision you had to think about.”<\/p>\n

The man whose task it was to drop the bomb was equally blunt in his assessment, although he seemingly also included a retributory angle to the utilitarian\/economic one of simply saving lives. Said Brigadier General Paul Tibbets:<\/p>\n

Most writers have looked to the ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to find answers for the use of those atomic weapons. The real answers lay in thousands of graves from Pearl Harbor around the world to Normandy and back again. The actual use of the weapons as ordered by the President of the United States was believed to be the quickest and least costly (in terms of lives cost) way to stop the killing. I carried out those orders with the loyal support of the men [of his unit] and the United States military at large. Our job was to serve. Our sworn duty was to God, country, and victory.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One of the most recognized events in the Vietnam conflict was the atrocities of Mai Lai, perpetrated by Lt. William Calley. According to one account:<\/p>\n

Calley’s platoon had crossed the plaza on the town’s southern edge and entered the village. They encountered families cooking rice in front of their homes. The men began their usual search-and-destroy task of pulling people from homes, interrogating them, and searching for VC. Soon the killing began. The first victim was a man stabbed in the back with a bayonet. Then a middle-aged man was picked up, thrown down a well, and a grenade lobbed in after him.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to the Military Court which would later hear the Calley case:<\/p>\n

No doubt Lieutenant Calley would never have directed or participated in a mass killing in time of peace. Nevertheless, he committed an atrocity in time of war and it is in the context of war that we judge him. Destructive as war is, war is not an occasion for the unrestrained satisfaction of an individual soldier’s proclivity to kill.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The case of Lt. Calley is especially important in that it was one state holding its actor culpable for acts committed. No doubt there was a sincere desire to punish Lt. Calley for his heinous acts, but equally certain is the fact that the United States Military and Government had an eye towards its reputation both within the country and internationally. Indeed, in the years since the Vietnam conflict, the US Department of Defense has had a \u201cLaw of War Program\u201d which aims to \u201c[e]nsure that the members of the DoD components comply with the law of war during all armed conflicts, however such conflicts are characterized, and in all other operations.\u201d These principles are those set forth in both the Geneva Convention and the United States Code.<\/p>\n

Anyway, if there were a Readers Digest Version of this post, it would be \u201cWar is Hell, get used to it.\u201d But more so, note that during the 20th and 21st Centuries, there is finally an active attempt to limit collateral damage.\u00a0 Doesn’t jive too well with the hyperbole about this war and Bush being the worst thing of all time does it.\u00a0 Will have more next week and debunk the entire premise of this piece of [IVAW] book Collateral Damage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[N]o [one] was seen begging the [occupiers] to spare his life, nor did they in ignoble … A little Historical Perspective<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2074\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}